Let me tell you a story. For Christmas, Johnny's decided to let me build a dream machine. He had been keeping a list of all the hardware that he wanted to put into his next box for close to 6 months; updating it religiously ever week. She took his list and bought every thing on it. The beauty of the machine floored him. It ran like a monster! With the dual processors and a spankin' GeForce 3 Ti 500, he was getting over 190 FPS in Quake 3 at 1024x768/32-bit color. Heaven, I think he was in heaven.
About 45 days after building the box, Johnny decided to take it to work so he could install some software and show it off. Johnny quickly set the box up as soon as he arrived and powered it up. To his dismay the video had four neat rows of triangles across the screen and the box refused to boot at all. He assumed that the GeForce 3 had wiggled loose in transport and turned the box off.

I'll save you the in depth description of everything Johnny tried to resolve the issue, lets just say that after several hours of troubleshooting, He decided to take the card out, put his old GeForce 2 MX back in and see what happens. And as you probably already suspect, I was back in business with a $350.00 US paperweight. (opps,.. I mean Johnny. Damn.. yes, I admit it.. I fried my GeForce 3 and had no idea how I did it.)

Well now that we have dropped the Johnny façade, let's talk about the next week of my life I will never get back. The store return period had been up for over 3 weeks, and I was faced with contacting the manufacturer. I still had the box it came in and believe it or not there was an 800 number printed on the outside with text proclaiming "FREE TECHNICAL SUPPORT". I called the number to see about a RMA. Believe it or not the IVR suggests you submit a support incident on their web page and hangs up on you! Don't believe me? Call yourself: 877-484-5536

Next, I visited their website based on the information supplied by their ever so kind IVR system. I submitted my case through their "web based" email system and waited. And waited. And waited. I waited for 7 days before getting a reply. The reply simply gave me an RMA number and informed me that ALL documents, disks and devices needed to be shipped back in the original box and upon receipt of the goods they would process my RMA. I could expect a 6-8 week wait. Welcome to my hell.

Coming soon, we will be reviewing the Technical Support offered by manufacturers and rating them on how well they stand behind their warranty. If you are interested in helping, we really need to start gathering support phone numbers offered by documentation included with GeForce 3 Ti 5 Video cards. If you have one, post it in the comments.

OK, I hope I am able to help someone make the right decision here. I am a new modder. I discovered your little hobby when I saw the light and window kits on thinkgeek. I quickly ordered the stunning black case w/ window from them a week later.

When I got the package I noticed that it actually shipped from PCMods and checked out their site. I quickly made a list of the cool stuff I wanted and left it sitting on the desktop for my wife to find. 8)

Find it she did and ordered all the stuff I wanted for my birthday, which was Thanksgiving. When the order arrived she noticed right away that things were missing. No lazer cut fan grill or clear rounded IDE cable.

She contacted PCMods to find out they were out of stock on the items and had no estimate when they would get them in but they did conveniently charge her for the missing items so she would not have to pay again. So, she proceeded to wrap what had arrived and prepared to let me know the rest would be showing up later.

When I opened the present yesterday, I was pretty excited but the phat 430 watt power supply, case handle, rounded floppy cable and Liquid Neon light. But I noticed right away that the light was not what we ordered. What came in the box was this. Note the car cigarette lighter power source.

Now you prolly are saying "who cares" right? Well here is what is advertised on PCMods.com:

Each kit is made up of a fixture, bulb, Molex plug, and switch. No assembly is required.

Well as you can guess, half the light kit didn't even show and no instructions on how to get it to work with my box. It did look really cool in my car though.. 8)

So to date I am out 1 laser cut fan grill, 1 rounded IDE cable and half a light kit. All for the low low price of $205.06.

I hope that PCMods will make good on the rest of the merchandise but if you are wanting to purchase something for a Christmas present and actually get the things you order in time for the holidays, you might want to consider what happened to me over a month before Christmas and consider buying somewhere else.

So we have all ordered stuff online. ThinkGeek and Amazon get a lot of our money and we are in general happy with the service they provide. But there is a flipside to all of this. Can we hear a few horror stories from people who have ordered stuff online and were scammed? What coarse of action do we have to stop others from falling prey to the same scams?

My wife is a huge wine lover (the beverage not the emulator), so for her birthday I decided to get her a wine of the month club. I did a quick search on Google and found Wine House, who seems to offer an awesome wine club. They offer a list of 9 "wine experts" with bios to select from as your guide into the realm of fermented grapes. I selected Jamie Koren, as he has a passion for Rieslings, which my lady friend enjoys the most. I picked the option to receive 2 bottles per month for no more than $45. The order form also gives the option of giving special instructions, so I asked that my first shipment arrive on or before the 14th of August.

I submitted this order on the 1st of August. I promptly received a very nice confirmation message detailing my order and letting me know it was accepted. So when the 14th came and past I naturally became a bit concerned. I quickly launched my browser and went to the contact us page for Wine House. They actually offered a number, which calmed me somewhat.

I spoke with Steve G who did not seem to know what I was talking about. He asked for my number and said he would call back. Two hours later Steve called and stated that they did not have a wine of the month club offered on the Internet, so I offered to forward the address of the site and the order confirmation to him. He agreed and said he would call me later.

After waiting 3 days and paying a $150 "sorry you don't have a birthday gift" dinner fee to the little lady, I called again and was directed to Steve's voice mail. He never did call back, so later that day I called again.

This time Steve was there and explained to me that the website order from was too difficult for them to fulfill so they just canceled all the orders that came in. When asked why the form was still up, Steve claimed that they could not get Wine Access their hosting company to remove it.

Steve then offered to take my order over the phone for the wine club they offer that they could fulfill. The only catch was that it was $5 more and I get whatever they send me. Oh, and you pay all up front. I declined.

I tried sending an email to the manager JB, but the message bounced. So I checked out Wine Access' website and called the number given there which promptly led to voicemail hell. So I sent an email to them instead. To which I have yet to receive a reply.

So at this point I am out no money, other than that spent making up for the lack of a birthday present. But I want to insure that no one else makes the same mistakes.

Suggestions are welcome.